As part of the ongoing process of developing ApoE4.Info, Inc., we are adopting a comprehensive set of site policies. The overall purpose is to establish a solid framework for handling conflict, especially when it originates externally to our community and has potential to place us in legal jeopardy. We are fortunate not to have encountered any trouble so far; if we do, this proactive step will reduce our exposure.
We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, so we adapted policies used by the Digital Media Law Project, a not-for-profit organization devoted to the legal concerns of new media publishers. The DMLP policies were a good starting point for us for three reasons:
The DMLP’s mission is structurally similar to our own. What we strive to be to ApoE4 research and clinical strategy, they strive to be to digital media legal issues.
The DMLP’s desire to be an exemplar in this area caused them to develop an especially thorough policy set.
Like us, the DMLP wants to share valuable information with the world. To this end, they license the vast majority of their work under a Creative Commons License that allows others to use it for non-commercial purposes as long as they credit the DMLP and license derivative works identically.
For the most part, the policies cover the usual topics in an unsurprising way. While we encourage everyone to read the entire policy set and voice questions and comments here, we do want to highlight proactively two policy elements that are departures from current practice.
First, we like the DMLP’s use of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. It provides structured, limited support for dissemination and use of the DMLP’s work under a non-exclusive license. Those with commercial purposes must try to negotiate a license with additional rights. If the DMLP doesn’t like what the requestor wants to do or thinks the requestor’s offer is insufficient, it can turn down the request.
We have adopted the same approach. All contributions to the core site or via postings to these forums are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Contributors retain all other rights, and because the license is non-exclusive, contributors are free to negotiate different licenses with parties who want rights not offered.
This probably seems a bit abstract to most of us right now. It’s hard to think of an example of current site content with commercial appeal. Like most of the new policy provisions, choosing a specific license is just a way of narrowing the scope of unexpected but possible future conflicts. Instead of leaving open the question of whether contributors or ApoE4.Info own site content, we’re saying preemptively that contributors reserve most rights and license ApoE4.Info with just enough rights to do its job operating the website.
The second notable change involves the posting of protected content. It has come to Management’s attention - ahem - that certain papers otherwise found only behind paywalls have been uploaded to the forums. While we sympathize with the indignity of being denied free access to research results that in many cases have been funded publicly, this is not purely an ethical issue. Hosting protected content in the forums exposes ApoE4.Info, Inc. to legal and financial risk.
Going forward, we’re going to comply fully with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Please don’t upload papers that are not freely available, and please don’t link directly to them on Sci-Hub or any other infringing repositories. Note that under fair use doctrine those of us who obtain personal access to a paper can share incisive excerpts for discussion purposes.
The Moderation Team will edit posts as necessary to remove infringing content and replace it with a generic suggestion that members in jurisdictions for which access to Sci-Hub is legal search for the paper there. We can link to the sci-hub.bz landing page - we just can’t link directly to protected content.
These are the policies:
Terms of Use - this is the main laundry list of provisions and protections. We suggest that everyone read this semi-carefully.
Community Guidelines - this is similar to our previous Community Guidelines, but the legalistic aspects have been removed as they are covered in the Terms of Use. As before, this is crucial information for all community members.
Privacy Notice - we have this because the DMLP says, “... a privacy policy will help you avoid liability under a complex array of state and federal laws dealing with users' private information.” Boring - feel free to skip.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act Policy - this is an element of our effort to take advantage of the safe harbor provision of the DMCA. Boring.
